Four tickets, Yankees/Indians regular season game: $10,750

Just watch markets like Cleveland and Detroit. I'd predict some games drawing less than 5,000.

Not to thread jack, but I got a sample of the dire state of things last week at the MLS opener in Columbus. MLS champs return home to an announced crowd of 14,000 or so, two thousand of which were Toronto fans. The stadium seats well into the 22K range too.

 

See what happens when you let Tex walk away, fail to make an offer to Manny and John Lackey gets hurt.

 

Zag the numbers may say there up but in the NHL there is no way they are up. Teams are papering the buildings to qualify for revenus sharing. If attendance figures are up money generated from attendance sure as hell isn't. Not when you're either giving away your tickets or devaluing your product by selling them so cheap. This isn't jsut happening to teams in the Sunbelt it is happening in decent markets as well.

 

As I said....

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4036916

 

Zag, the figures might look good, but the tickets for 2008-09 were bought a long time ago, well before the banks collapsed and well before this little recession turned into something much worse. Even if the seats are empty, I believe those seats were sold.

NOW people are watching every dime, and the shit will really hit the fan starting with baseball season. Those figures are going to go south, in a hurry. Wait til next year in the NBA and NHL. That's gonna be ugly. And these numbers will stay ugly until well after the economy recovers, sometime in 2035.

I do think the bubble has finally, mercifully burst.

 

It sounds like a lot of wishful thinking.

It really does.

I just know this, attendance being down is not an issue with our local teams. Not even talked, not even an issue.

 

In my area, two of the three NHL franchises draw for shit.

 

Believe it or not I am not arguing or trying to argue - I'm just saying I see things like Calipari getting 35 mil or whatever, albert haynsworth getting 100 mil, the yankee spending 200 mil on three players etc., etc., etc. and think, if there is a crunch, it certainly hasn't curtailed spending

 

What does? My post? I understand your skepticism, but just wait and see where we are in a year. The last six months have proven the dangers of always "finding the money" necessary to treat oneself. People aren't going to soon forget what's gone on lately.

Edit: There will ALWAYS be money for the big signees. There will always be a desperate school or a stupid owner willing to double the nearest bidder. But look at the free agent market in baseball this winter...outside of a handful of guys, everyone else fought for scraps (relatively speaking). People are still getting rich in the real world. But everything is still falling to shit for 99 pct of us.

 

Hank: Sure, some tickets might be overpriced but we got it mostly right!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090402/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bba_yankees_pricey_tickets_4

Nate Silver has an article in the new Esquire making (eventually) that very point.

http://www.esquire.com/features/data/mlb-player-salaries-0409?click=main_sr

 

From the Yahoo article:

Way to empathize with the fans there, Johnny. Can't you at least pretend to get it?

 

Yanks may need a bail out.